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Chris selected as K12OnlineConference keynote speaker
Each year the K12OnlineConference provides tremendous professional development for free, and entirely online. This year, they have selected me as one of their keynote speakers. I am thrilled to have been chosen and look forward to participating in the conversation.
Read the full post announcing all the keynote speakers here.

Two quick links on Cognitive Load Theory I've been fielding lots of questions lately about Cognitive Load Theory.
Here are two quick links that may be useful. First is an article talking about the practical implications of CLT on the design of learning.
The second are some "recent" (as of 2003) developments regarding CLT.
Happy reading!
Update: I clarified the second...

Practical advice on kids and Android app development After hearing about my students' success developing an Android app, I've gotten several emails asking for more details as to how I practically worked with my kids.
Here are some pointers that I offered to the first person that emailed me, perhaps they are of some use to you. Please note that your mileage may vary.
It's ok to not be...

Publishing an App Inventor app to the Android Market As I mentioned earlier, my students and I published an Android app to the Android Market. See those links for more information on the background. This post is decidedly technical.
First, once we finished the coding process, we packaged the app for to download to the computer. This is an option in App Inventor. This downloaded an .apk file....

Designing and publishing an Android app with kids This post is designed to provide some context around how/why we decided to build this app. The more technical details of the code and how we published it will come in a future post.
My students and I recently completed and published an Android app, and here's how we did it.
First, the genesis for this goes back to a question I asked...

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Publishing an App Inventor app to the Android Market

As I mentioned earlier, my students and I published an Android app to the Android Market. See those links for more information on the background. This post is decidedly technical.

First, once we finished the coding process, we packaged the app for to download to the computer. This is an option in App Inventor. This downloaded an .apk file. It is possible to install that .apk file directly to the phone, but it is not possible to publish that file directly to the market. Here’s how to put the finishing touches on your app and get it ready for publishing.

First, save yourself LOADS of time and go download the amazing conversion program located here. Then follow these steps.

Start up the app 2 market app by running the batch file in the folder.

Create your security certificate. This is a super important step because all future iterations of the app have to be signed by the very same certificate. In other words, you have to enter the very same information. Once you get it entered, click Save Config. This is a critical step.

Go to the next tab and browse for the file.

Decompile it.

Make any changes you want. If this is the second time you are uploading (in other words, you’re upgrading the app) you need to change the version code and version number.

[...] The App Inventor FAQ says no, you can’t. But it’s a well-known secret that you can perfectly well, as long as you know how to turn the file App Inventor creates into one that the Android Market will accept. Fortunately, there are a bunch of tutorials online that explain how to do this. Click here to read one of them. [...]

[...] The App Inventor FAQ says no, you can’t. But it’s a well-known secret that you can perfectly well, as long as you know how to turn the file App Inventor creates into one that the Android Market will accept. Fortunately, there are a bunch of tutorials online that explain how to do this. Click here to read one of them. [...]

[...] The App Inventor FAQ says no, you can’t. But it’s a well-known secret that you can perfectly well, as long as you know how to turn the file App Inventor creates into one that the Android Market will accept. Fortunately, there are a bunch of tutorials online that explain how to do this. Click here to read one of them. [...]

[...] The App Inventor FAQ says no, you can’t. But it’s a well-known secret that you can perfectly well, as long as you know how to turn the file App Inventor creates into one that the Android Market will accept. Fortunately, there are a bunch of tutorials online that explain how to do this. Click here to read one of them. [...]

noobiecoder said on 16-08-2011

this is exactly what i was looking for thanks for the info, but im a bit worried because googles killing google labs, my question is, is there a way to continue using google app inventor once they shut down the website in 3 months

Mixtah said on 12-10-2011

This also works great, same principal, just more simple, just download a couple files, and move files around, and copy and paste what i wrote into command prompt, It works and made as simple as possible so anyone can understand.http://bit.ly/qIUsHG